Free Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

didn't know why. Birds sang in the other room. I took off my clothes. I went onto the couch.
    He stared at me. It was the first time I had ever been naked in front of a man. I wondered if he knew that.
    He came over and moved my body like I was a doll. He put my hands behind my head. He bent my right leg a little. I assumed his hands were so rough from all of the sculptures he used to make. He lowered my chin. He turned my palms up. His attention filled the hole in the middle of me.
    I went back the next day. And the next day. I stopped looking for a job. All that mattered was him looking at me. I was prepared to fall apart if it came to that. Each time it was the same. He would talk about what he wanted to make. I would tell him I would do whatever he needed. We would drink coffee. We would never talk about the past. He would open the flue. The birds would sing in the other room. I would undress. He would position me. He would sculpt me.
    Sometimes I would think about those hundred letters laid across my bedroom floor. If I hadn't collected them, would our house have burned less brightly?
    I looked at the sculpture after every session. He went to feed the animals. He let me be alone with it, although I never asked him for privacy. He understood.
    After only a few sessions it became clear that he was sculpting Anna. He was trying to remake the girl he knew seven years before. He looked at me as he sculpted, but he saw her. The positioning took longer and longer. He touched more of me.
    He moved me around more. He spent ten full minutes bending and unbending my knee. He closed and unclosed my hands.
    I hope this doesn't embarrass you, he wrote in German in his little book.
    No, I said in German. No.
    He folded one of my arms. He straightened one of my arms. The next week he touched my hair for what might have been five or fifty minutes.
    He wrote, I am looking for an acceptable compromise.
    I wanted to know how he lived through that night.
    He touched my breasts, easing them apart.
    I think this will be good, he wrote.
    I wanted to know what will be good. How will it be good?
    He touched me all over. I can tell you these things because I am not ashamed of them, because I learned from them. And I trust you to understand me. You are the only one I trust, Oskar.
    The positioning was the sculpting. He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me.
    He spread my legs. His palms pressed gently at the insides of my thighs. My thighs pressed back. His palms pressed out.
    Birds were singing in the other room.
    We were looking for an acceptable compromise.
    The next week he held the backs of my legs, and the next week he was behind me. It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?
    I looked at the unfinished sculpture of my sister, and the unfinished girl looked back at me.
    Why does anyone ever make love?
    We walked together to the bakery where we first met.
    Together and separately.
    We sat at a table. On the same side, facing the windows.
    I did not need to know if he could love me.
    I needed to know if he could need me.
    I flipped to the next blank page of his little book and wrote, Please marry me.
    He looked at his hands.
    YES and NO.
    Why does anyone ever make love?
    He took his pen and wrote on the next and last page, No children.
    That was our first rule.
    I understand, I told him in English.
    We never used German again.
    The next day, your grandfather and I were married.
     

    THE ONLY ANIMAL
     
    I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. 'Which problem?'
    'The problem of